lenient
adjective
Did you know?
If you’ve ever had a peaceful, easy feeling—perhaps brought on by someone who you know won’t let you down—then you’ll have no problem understanding the earliest meaning of lenient. When it entered English in the mid-1600s, lenient described something soothing—such as a medication—that relieved pain or stress, or otherwise enabled someone to take it easy. For a brief window of time it was even used as a noun, referring to any of various ointments and balms that help heal wounds in the long run. Lenient comes from the Latin verb lenire, meaning “to soften or soothe,” which in turn comes from the adjective lenis, meaning “soft or mild.” The “soothing or easing” sense of lenient is still in use today, but English speakers are more likely to apply it to someone who is lax with the rules (as in “a lenient professor”), who doesn’t mind when someone acts like a certain kind of fool or takes it to the limit one more time.
Examples of lenient in a Sentence
Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Times Book Review, 16 July 1989
He could trust himself, he said … to be more lenient than perhaps his father had been to himself; his danger, he said … would be rather in the direction of being too indulgent …
—Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, 1903
But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out.
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
a teacher who is lenient with students who have misbehaved
Many people felt that the punishment was too lenient.
Shirsho Dasgupta, Miami Herald, 4 Mar. 2025
Most major cruise lines register their ships in foreign countries to benefit from more lenient tax and labor laws.
—Nathan Diller, USA TODAY, 27 Feb. 2025
But many in the industry are looking at the Trump administration to have a more lenient attitude toward mergers and acquisitions and, more specifically, the relaxation or even repeal of the FCC’s media ownership rules.
—Ted Johnson, Deadline, 17 Feb. 2025
Woodward’s family vocally opposed the deal as overly lenient and praised Dickinson’s decision not to go through with it.
—Nate Gartrell, The Mercury News, 30 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for lenient
Cite this Entry
“Lenient.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lenient. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
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